


Sympathy for the Devil

by kheelwithit



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, The Adventures of Sinbad (TV)
Genre: Gen, idek, it just sat there in my docs, it's not bad, ja'far helps, sinbad's life sucks, so here it is.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 20:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10907001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kheelwithit/pseuds/kheelwithit
Summary: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”“But the road to heaven is paved with bodies.”“How do you tell the difference?”“That’s the scary part.”Sinbad tries to find the distinction from where David ends, to where he begins, and if it really even matters at the end.





	Sympathy for the Devil

“I think there’s something wrong, Ja’far.” His voice trembles in the cold and the wet and he stammers like he’s seen ghosts, pallid fingers in an iron grip around the doorway. The corner of his mouth is smeared with vomit and not all of the water on his face came from the storm that pours down around him in the dark. 

Ja’far looks at him blankly, children skittering and tottering around his knees and there’s accusation and blame that slices through Sinbad like a blade and it’s exactly what he didn’t need to see.  
“I told you that you shouldn’t have been in the rain, stupid! What’ll we all do if you’re down for the trip tomorrow, hmm?”

And Ja’far doesn’t understand what he means at all. Sinbad doesn’t say another word about it, plays the fool unconvincingly as he’s tugged in their inn room, while Ja’far sets a new set of clothes on his bed sternly and ushers Hinahoho’s kids from bothering him, their questions that he usually welcomes go unanswered and this is so unusual that they go silently, wide blue eyes peering behind them as the door closes and Sinbad is left in the dark, feeling dark and without any amount of certainty anymore. 

Sinbad changes because he needs to feel clean again. The clothes peel off like a second skin and he fancies that he might be able to shed it, leave it behind and forget about it, what he saw and felt and didn’t feel. It doesn’t let him free, doesn’t let him rest, crawls inside of him and whispers insidious, that he won’t ever leave it, it won’t ever leave him, that it’s a black spot that’ll only ever grow and Sinbad wants to crawl out of this hide so badly like the snake that he is that he drags blunt nails down his skin, over and over, down his stomach and frantic over his neck until it’s all fulvous, sanguine and sickly because he can almost feel the voice curling around his vocal chords, he can almost feel himself saying it, saying he is not his own anymore and the horror makes him wretch on the floor like he did in the rain and for a second, it feels like relief, to put something, anything out, so he shoves his fingers down his throat, feels the muscles spasm and bile force its way up and he keeps doing it until there’s nothing left and his throat is scratched and Sinbad tastes iron in the back of his mouth, metallic and wretched and when he cries, it’s convulsive and it hurts and he curls in on himself, tries to separate what’s real and what’s not, naked, damp and cold on the floor.  
The second Ja’far walks in, he walks out.  
Then he wrenches Hinahoho aside, down the hall into another room with far less people, none really.

“We’re delaying the trip, I won’t hear different.”

Hinahoho is used to Ja’far’s bluster, the determination with which he goes at any task, from killing people to eating snakes at the bottom of a gorge, apparently (he’ll never be upset that he missed that) but he’s only seen this stony, steel look in his eyes a few times and all of those times, Ja’far was ready to fight. And so Hinahoho steps down and it could seem unreasonable, maybe, but he trusts his children to this strange, murdery little boymanthing, so he can trust him with this easily.

“Well, I suppose we are. You’re telling Rurumu, though. I’m not getting in trouble.” And that’s probably a fair exchange, though Ja’far, the same strange, murdery little boymanthing cringes hard at the mention of telling the resident matriarch any amount of bad news because even strange, murdery little boymanthings have mother figures. Which is good for him, Hinahoho thinks fondly while Ja’far stomps off to take care of whatever is important enough to delay trading and money. Whatever it is, Hinahoho figures he’ll probably find out in time. Everything comes out in the wash. 

Ja’far doesn’t tell Rurumu. He’s busy with other, vastly more important shit that far outlasts telling his mother that there’ll be a delay, even if she finally has finished packing the luggage. Sinbad comes first and that’s just all there ever has been. He picks up towels and his own bag of private, very expensive and sometimes poisonous supplies and chews on his lip like a man possessed and he’s glad Ma’ahad has always been a sickly twerp because he knows how to fix this. Ja’far creeps away into Sin’s inn room, the one he was fortunate enough to get to himself since Ja’far stayed with Hinahoho and the kids to babysit.

His King hasn’t moved. He’s still spilled over the floor like roadkill next to vomit, also spilled all over the floor, his hair full of cockaburrs and tangles and mud that Ja’far didn’t see last night and things are showing that he’s never wanted to see in the light of day and there’s a rash that makes Ja’far worry he’s gotten drunk and stumbled through the town and down a hill into poison oak.


End file.
